


Feelie's Avengers Morgue Files

by The Feels Whale (miscellea)



Series: Feelie's Morgue Files [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, WIP dump, You Have Been Warned, doorstop endings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:09:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscellea/pseuds/The%20Feels%20Whale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of fics for the Avengers fandom where I've either written myself into a corner or have been Jossed with extreme prejudice to the point where I'm have a hard time picking the story back up. These are none of them betaed, but are things I like to re-read myself and still kind of want to share.</p>
<p>Expect identity porn, homoerotic snark, Tony singing for some reason, and a reasonable chance of obnoxious door-stop endings in your fic forecast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unlikely Lullaby

 

_Summary_ : Obie said to lay low so Tony is laying low.

Supervising one of the deep arctic salvage missions should be as low as you can possibly lay… right?

OR: That one where Tony finds Steve first.

 

* * *

 

Funny story; you can fit one HELL of a workshop into the hull of a retrofitted double-acting tanker.

… okay, rewinding a bit.

Tony has been floating around in circles in the Arctic ocean for nearly two months. Technically, he is shepherding around a gaggle of scientists and biologists bent on discovering new microbes or whatever off the coast of Greenland.

In reality the researchers are actually IN Greenland now having abandoned ship after one too many explosions on Tony’s end of the boat. So now they’re just flat-out looking for salvage. The Pandora II has been doing this for a very long time and in fact was preceded by the Pandora I, which was Howard Stark’s vessel of choice when he went noodling around the ice cap on whatever personal quest it was that drove him out into the Arctic time and time again.

Tony used to think his old man was nuts, but in hindsight he’s got to admit that you cannot beat the privacy. The crew could not give a shit what he does so long as he doesn’t blow a hole in the hull and most times he doesn’t even have cell reception out here so Pepper (or Obie) can’t nag him.

It’s been a long year for him and the bracing cold of the icy ocean all around him is… it helps the nightmares, waking up cold instead of sweltering hot. He focuses better.

_Doesn’t think about the sucking red wound in Yinsen’s chest and the look of peace spreading across the man’s face as he says ‘This was always the plan.’ Because it’s_ always _the plan. The people Tony loves die. It’s as inevitable as the fucking tides, but he can’t stop. He tries. He_ does _, but it. never._ **works** _._

The suit is coming along. He’s produced a workable prototype for the flight system, but ran into trouble when he realized that rocket boots on their own are only really good for thrust. For stability and maneuverability, he needs flight stabilizers… preferably in his hands.

What he has in mind has fantastic offensive potential, but the primary goal is minimally assisted human flight. He can make guns in his sleep. This is a million times more complex.

… which is why he’s really fucking irritated when someone pounds on the hatch leading into his shop.

JARVIS doesn’t have the fine control of the ship that he does Tony’s various houses and Dummy’s in his heated locker with Butterfingers and You where their joints won’t seize up in the cold. So Tony has to go answer his own door and face down the red-faced sailor standing there.

“ _What_.”

“We found something, sir.” The man says and there’s something about the way he holds himself, a barely-contained energy… excitement? Really? “You need to see this.”

“Apparently I do.” Tony says.

He doesn’t regret it.

Sonar reveals the extent of their find and Tony recognizes the silhouette of the downed plane from his father’s old notes and few sketches from eye witnesses; it’s a Destroyer-class HYDRA bomber. It is THE Destroyer. The plane is huge, ungainly, and flies (literally) in the face of every convention of aerodynamics. Like the bumblebee, there is no way it should be able to fly… and apparently, much like that bee, no one ever told HYDRA.

His salvage crew is well-trained. Many of them worked for Howard back in the day and learned the art at his knee. They are prepared, cautious, and near-surgical in their precision. The fact that Tony can and does build them whatever tools they need on-site helps somewhat.

For this find he tables everything – _everything_ , even the suit, because _this_? This is the discovery of the fucking CENTURY. He forgoes food, sleep, and even coffee at a few key junctures just so he doesn’t miss a single second of the action.

It’s worth it when the first team comes back with pictures.

… pictures of a round shield coated in nearly four inches of ice. There is the ghostly image of a body deeper within, like a shadow in the heart of a diamond.

Tony pours a toast to his dad that night, but doesn’t have time to drink it.

It turns out that removing a body from ice is _incredibly_ difficult. One wrong move or go too fast and the ice will crack, shearing anything caught inside into pieces. Tony takes double-shifts minding the steamer, carefully melting ice with one of the four blow-driers on the ship, and taking scans of The Body.

… until the day JARVIS runs a routine medical scan and reveals that The Body has a _pulse_.

Tony has to sit down for a little while after that revelation –because he could have handled being the man who found and brought Captain America’s body back home for a proper burial.

What he can’t handle is being the man who found Captain America and discovered he was _still alive_.

That night, as he sits next to the bed that used to be his (it’s fine, he barely uses it anyway) because there is one person on this ship who has the leisure to sit by and watch Cap’s monitoring devices beep and that person is Tony, he finds the measure he’d poured in his Dad’s honor.

He picks it up and swirls the vodka around in the glass, searching for words that seem appropriate. “Sorry, Old Man.” He says at last and means it because Howard Stark devoted his life and his fortune to this search… and to the man who was waiting, alive, at the end of it only to have his good-for-nothing son do what he couldn’t because he decided to fuck around in the arctic for a few months on a whim.

Once this might have come as a cruel sort of vindication; empirical proof that Tony has _won_. Only now he’s old enough to wonder what exactly it is that he’s won _at_.

“Here’s to Stark men keeping their promises.” Tony says at last because he gets it. No, really. He does.

This was never about Howard or Tony. It’s about the man lying in Tony’s bed on a saline drip and packed in with hot water bottles who has been away from home for a _very_ long time.

“Welcome back, soldier.” Tony says… and leaves the glass on the bedside table. Cap can drink it when he wakes up.

 

* * *

 

Steve Rogers closes his eyes. He can hear the roar of the Destroyer’s engine, the hiss of pressurized air escaping the square hole in the floor where Schmidt’s noxious toy _ate_ through the deck, somewhere in the midst of that whining noise he can hear Peggy voice talking to him… outlining a plan for their date in that precise measured voice he never got the chance to properly fall in love with…

He opens his eyes… and the noise is gone.

The air is still and mostly quiet. It takes his ears a second to adjust, but he can hear a faint whine in the distance and the humming of machinery.

He’s in a bed; more of a cot really, but he’s swaddled in thick blankets and someone’s changed him out of his uniform. What little he can see of himself, which is pretty much just an arm at this point is covered in a thick green sweater over long underwear.

Someone is singing. After a while, Steve realizes he recognizes the song.

“… _all the mission bells will ring, the chapel choir will sing, the happiness you'll bring will live in my memory_ …”

It’s a man’s voice. American, which comes as a relief, and a little off-key. There was a moment when he first opened his eyes and saw the gunmetal gray ceiling that he thought ‘HYDRA has me’, but he’s seen how HYDRA keeps their prisoners. It’s nothing like this. Moreover, their musical taste tends to run more towards horrific tinny polkas than ‘When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano’.

The source of the music turns out to be a wiry little guy in a thick black sweater, bulky red socks, and a pair of much abused dungarees. His back is turned mostly towards Steve and he’s bent over something on his work table. Whatever it is, it’s beyond Steve’s ken… but it bears little resemblance to HYDRA’s weapons of terror. It’s too sleek for Arnim Zola’s blocky, workmanlike designs and actually, the more he looks at it the more it looks like a human hand made out of metal with the inner workings exposed. The fingers twitch as the man works and the motion carries through the entire thing; wires move where the tendons ought to be and thin sheets of metal shift in place of muscle.

Later, he won’t be sure why he thought this, but the word creaks out of him without any real effort on his part. “Howard…?”

The man turns, bushy black eyebrows raised, and he is not Howard Stark. He favors the man somewhat and maybe it’s his general frame that Steve is responding to. However, he sports a sleek goatee that is almost a van dyck (but not quite) and is wearing a pair of vaguely bulbous glasses with tinted yellow lenses that he tilts back onto the top of his head, where they flatten out his tousled black hair in front.

He drops onto the stool next to Steve’s bed, bracing his elbows on his thighs so his hands hand loose in-between his knees. “Not exactly.” He says and there’s something gentle about his tone, something Steve recognizes from many a hospital stay as the herald of bad news. “I’m Tony.”

“I don’t know any Tonys.” Steve croaks and then coughs as his throat seizes up on him. He fumbles for a glass of water sitting nearby, but the man… _Tony_ plucks it out of reach.

“Ooooh, ow, _no_. That’s not something you want right now.” He sets it aside. “Let me get you some actual water.”

“What is it?” Talking hurts, but Steve’s gotten paranoid since taking up his shield. “Medicine?” He asks. ‘ _Poison_?’ He thinks.

“Vodka.” Is Tony’s response as he fills a coffee mug with water from the tap of a yellowed utility sink and Steve finds he’s got enough energy to sputter in indignation before Tony puts the edge of the mug to his lips and makes him drink. “Better?”

“Yes.” Steve takes stock. Physically he’s still weaker than a kitten, but his muscles have that pernicious soreness that comes from exhaustion rather than drugs. He isn’t tied down unless you count the way he has been ruthlessly tucked into the blankets. “Where am I?”

“Somewhere in the arctic ocean.” Tony shrugs a shoulder. “I haven’t been keeping precise track of where we are, but we’re en route to Alaska.”

“What kind of sailor doesn’t know the ship’s position?”

“No kind of sailor, which the kind of sailor I am.” Tony sketches a little bow. “I am Anthony Stark, the eccentric millionaire funding this excursion. Nice to meet you.”

“You’re a relation of Howard’s?”

Steve doesn’t like the way Tony’s face goes still at the mention of Howard’s name. It’s not grief (it couldn’t be, Steve left Howard in the middle of the SSR’s main HQ not even three days ago) just… a very strategic emotional withdrawal. Steve knows that face. He’s seen it in the mirror a lot lately.

“Yes.” Tony says. “You might not want to hear it though.”

“Tell me.” Steve runs his tongue over cracked dry lips. “How long have I been…” Weeks? Months? He’s heard of comas lasting that long.

“Don’t say I didn’t try to spare you…”

Tony tells him… everything.

_Everything_.

When it’s over, Steve closes his eyes –and under the cover of the blankets he clenches his fists.

 

* * *

 

It the days that follow, Steve learns an awful lot about the self-proclaimed ‘eccentric millionaire’ who defrosted him.

For one thing, Tony has never met a silence he has not felt compelled to fill.

He chatters _incessantly_ be it to Steve, his robots, or the occasional inanimate object. Tony’s entire existence seems to be one endless stream of consciousness. Whatever is on his mind is on his lips with zero filtration in-between. Steve is almost offended once or twice, but after a while he realizes that half the time Tony doesn’t even realize he was speaking aloud.

On the rare occasions when he _isn’t_ talking, he’s singing –and Steve isn’t entirely sure it’s not for his benefit.

“You know, you don’t have to do that.” He says one day as Tony croons ‘Rum and Coca-cola’ to the weird metal boot thing on his work bench.

Tony looks up and Steve tries not to flinch at how much like his dad he looks with his hair standing on end, grease streaks on his forehead, and a screwdriver clenched between his teeth. “Whazaa?” He doesn’t bother to spit the tool out, just talks around the handle.

“Only sing the stuff I know.” Steve turns his face away. “I know there’s been new music since my day. Least, I hope so.”

“There has. I just can’t verbally reproduce screaming guitars.” Tony’s voice isn’t garbled any more. “Uh, look. I realize I generally fail at this whole ‘empathy’ thing, but I gotta know. The singing isn’t bothering you, is it? Because I can knock it off all together if it is. I just think better with music and the cold basically killed my music system. It’s been all I can do to keep JARVIS’s speakers online.”

“It doesn’t bother me.” That isn’t a lie either. Tony isn’t going to be making records any time soon, but he’s got a decent tenor and can carry a tune more or less so long as it isn’t doing anything complicated. More importantly, the noise helps keep Steve’s thoughts from spiraling out of control. He wouldn’t have chosen company, but he finds that Tony’s presence helps.

“Consider yourself lucky.” Tony chuckles and turns back to his alarming footwear. “When we get back to civilization, I’ll play you some of what I normally listen to. You’re gonna hate it _so bad_.”

Steve snorts and privately chooses to reserve his judgment. He’s never been picky where music is concerned. After a few minutes of thoughtful humming as Tony tapped his screwdriver against his palm, he starts to sing again. He starts off a little warbly (clearly feeling self conscious) but finds his groove again with relative ease.

“ _Once I rose above the noise and confusion, just to get a glimpse behind this illusion, I was soaring ever higher –but I flew too high_ …”

He closes his eyes and listens. It’s a good song about ambition, confusion, and guiding the weary home. Steve finds his eyes growing heaving as Tony follows it with another unlikely lullaby. His voice follows Steve into his dreams and for once he isn’t reliving the last few moments before the bomber hits the ice shelf or the bone-numbing cold as water floods the canon.

Mostly he dreams of being warm and safe as someone sings an unfamiliar song.

“… _workin’ hard to get my fill. Everybody wants a thrill: paying anything to roll the dice just one more time. Some will win, some will lose. Some are born to sing the blues. Oh the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on_ …”

 

* * *

 

Steve is bedridden for three days before Tony wakes up face-planted on his workbench and sits up to find the first superhero in known history sitting up in bed… peeling the skin off a potato in a single perfect ribbon.

Tony blinks, scrubs at his eyes, looks again, and… “Really, Rogers? _Really_?”

“I need something to do.” He’s not even _looking_ at his hands and there’s a whole bowl of perfect potato skin ribbons sitting in-between his feet. How unfair is that?

“Ugh. I cannot handle you this early in the morning.” Tony groans and gropes for the coffee pot. It’s gone… or rather it’s been moved to the opposite side of the shop. He turns to look at Steve who, among his various perfections, has a flawless ‘who me?’ face. Tony points at him. “Not nice.”

“Caffeine decreases the effectiveness of your sleep.” Steve says, still peeling. He’s looking… a bit better than he has since they had The Talk. There are still ghosts, shadows, and a whole legion of nightmares lurking in his eyes but he seems less haunted. Okay, maybe there’s something to be said for occupation.

Tony makes a note to come up with some busy work for the Captain.

“I’m regretting giving you access to the internet.” Tony gets to his feet and attempts to stretch out his back with a grunt. “Here I was thinking you’d go straight for the porn and drown your sorrows in the spank bank. JARVIS tells me tales of woe about your love-affair with Huffpo.”

“Well, it’s not like they deliver papers all the way out here.” Steve replies, unstung. “Speaking of, JARVIS tells _me_ tales of woe about _your_ bum ticker.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my heart.” Tony scowls and makes a mental note to come up with a suitably horrific punishment for his AI; make him the sole moderator for the 13 & Under segment of the forums on the official TStark fansite or something. “It’s the bits of metal trying to get into it that are the problem. Get your facts right, Rogers. I have excellent cardiac genes.”

“That counts as a bad heart in my book.” Steve points at him with the tip of his knife. “Howard would come back from the grave and knife me if I didn’t say something.”

It’s on the tip of Tony’s tongue to say something sharp and cutting about the fact that Howard Stark barely noticed he _had_ a son in life and that the chances of that changing in the afterlife are perishingly small, but… Steve had managed to say Howard’s name without going silent, cutting himself off in mid-word, or turning away into a private world of grief. The words die on Tony’s tongue.

“Yeah, fine.” He takes a breath. “Okay. The coffee is off limits though. I’m barely functional in the mornings as it is already.”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Morning is _whenever I wake up_.” Tony rolls his shoulder and snaps his fingers to wake up the holoCAD. The various component pieces of the Mark I spring into brilliant life all around him and he feels a bit better, being just that much closer to his end goal.

“What is that?” Steve has gotten up and is reaching out to touch the filaments of light hanging in the air. Tony hides a smile. Most people back away from the holoCAD the first time they see it, like they’ll somehow break it just by standing too close.

“It’s a program I use to design my machines.” Tony says. He’s learned the hard way to keep it simple when he’s talking to Steve. He doesn’t even have the jargon most people pick up through television and science fiction so when Tony gets into full techno-babble he might as well be speaking another language. “This is pretty futuristic stuff, even for the future. You’re not going to see it hanging around.”

Steve chuckles. It sounds like a soft snort. “Of course it is.” He murmurs. “Hey, did Howard ever work out the kinks in his flying car?” He pauses and shakes his head. “Sorry, I… it was something I was looking forward to seeing.”

“Y –esss and _no_.” Tony says, drawing out the first syllable to cover up his surprise at the question. People don’t ask about Howard’s early work, the stuff he did before Obie bought into Stark Industries and became CFO. People are always interested in what comes later; the guns, the tanks, and that mother of all bombs. They forget about the dancing girls, the flying cars, and the amusement parks. All they remember are the damn _guns_. “He fixed the design, but he never was able to produce it. It’s because it didn’t run on fossil fuels and even today Stark Industries can’t measure up against the big oil companies. Business can be a bloody affair sometimes and there was a while where they were actively muscling out alternatives to gasoline engines. That’s started to change lately, but it’s still early days.”

“Oh, the renewable energy… thing. Sustainability?” Steve scrunches up his face as he tries to remember the proper buzzword. It’s kind of adorable and reminds Tony that when all is said and done, Captain America isn’t even _thirty_ yet (in actual lived years anyway). At the very least, it means he picks stuff up quickly and that’s before you get into the whole ‘enhanced cognition and problem solving abilities’ part. “What is this you’re making right now? It looks like a… head.”

“Helmet.” Tony corrects him and spreads the headpiece out into its exploded view. There’s something wrong in the wiring and Tony needs to work that out before he manufactures the first prototype. “It’s for…” He bites his lip, wondering how to explain –if he even SHOULD explain. “It’s a flying robot suit.”

“Oh.” Steve blinks and then shrugs. “All right.”

“Man, I wish everybody was as easy as you.” Tony laughs and …hah! _There_ it is. He begins reworking the wiring map, stripping the glowing lines out with his bare fingertips and tacking them down again in a new pattern.

“I’m not easy at all.” Steve catches one of the dangling ‘wires’ in his fingers. “Just overwhelmed, maybe.”

“Then I’m glad for the timing. Here, hold this.” Tony hands him the light pointer, folds the helmet back down into its consolidated view, and then lifts it up in both hands to put it over his head. “JARVIS, how’s it look?”

“All seems to be in order, Sir.”

“ _Wow_.” Steve lifts up the transparent mask, revealing Tony’s face. “What is all this for?”

“I need to clean house.” Tony takes off the mask and banishes the schematic to cover up for the sudden grim twist to his lips. “The normal channels aren’t open for me. So, we do it this way.”


	2. Blue Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balancing your work and home lives is never easy, but it’s even worse when you’re Steve Rogers juggling two separate identities: Captain America, leader of the Avengers, and Steve Rogers-Stark, the slightly vague and useless husband of international business mogul, Tony Stark.
> 
> Steve likes to think he’s doing okay. Then terrorists kidnap his husband… he’s less okay after that.

It’s been three months.

…three months, fourteen days, eight hours, and twelve minutes. The super powered crime rate in New York is up by 4.1%, but the overall crime rate in Malibu is _down_ by 63%. Eight days ago, Director Fury put Captain America on an open-ended leave of absence.

No one’s been brave enough to call it a leave of bereavement to his face yet, but give it time.

Steve has been in his home gym for nearly four hours. He’s destroyed the agility trainer, the elliptical trainer, torn the chin-up bars out of the ceiling, and the treadmill has started to make a high-pitched whine. Steve keeps running. The treadmill lasts another thirty minutes before the power suddenly cuts out.

“I apologize, sir, however the machine is beginning to overheat.” JARVIS says softly. He’s stopped bothering Steve to eat, sleep, or stop taking his back-up shield out into downtown Miami in the dead of night. “Emergency shutdown protocol has been initiated.”

Steve’s mouth twists. “That isn’t what he named it.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Just… say it.”

JARVIS doesn’t quite sigh. He isn’t given to those sorts of verbal tics, being an AI. “Executing the ‘Come to bed, Blockhead’ protocol. What little remains of the exercise equipment has been locked down for the next seventy-eight hours.”

The pain in his throat is intense, like all the lining to it has been stripped away by acid. Steve wants… very badly to walk down the hall to hi… to _their_ bedroom. He hasn’t managed it yet. He hasn’t been in there since the day his phone rang with Rhodes on the other end with his voice turned ragged by exhaustion and anger (and grief) telling Steve that the convoy ferrying Tony back from a product demo had been attacked by Afghani insurgents –and that Tony’s body was nowhere to be found.

News of Tony’s abduction hit the team unexpectedly hard.

Janet cried and hugged Steve while he husband Hank hung back looking grim with his fists clenched in the pockets of his lab coat. After Janet let him go Hank squeezed Steve’s forearm and said, “We’ll find him.” Since then he’s been making a lot of long distance calls that even Fury isn’t bitching about. Luke Cage and Ororo took turns keeping Steve company, which is perhaps one of the main reasons he fled the state. Steve isn’t convinced they aren’t still out there, just keeping their distance.

Tony would laugh, Steve thinks, to know that all these people who never even really met him and don’t know him as anything other than ‘that weird guy who married Cap’s alter ego’ seem to be truly angry and grief-stricken by his abduction.

Maybe it’s different, losing a loved one to the machinations of a costumed villain hell-bent on revenge for some imagined slight. Steve and all the Avengers live in a world where that is a known quantity; something you can prepare for and guard against. It’s personal, but in a way that can be controlled.

One poorly-protected American businessman falling victim to rage of a group of rag-tag terrorists intent on poking Uncle Sam in the eye seems so senseless by comparison. This had nothing to do with Tony, even less to do with Steve, and everything to do with the kind of cosmic bad luck that makes Steve wonder if he just isn’t allowed to love _anything_ without losing it.

Fury has flat-out banned the Avengers from going overseas to join the search and, moreover, has the power to actually enforce that. Steve would have been out there anyway, but Tony’s estate is tied up in the law offices. He supposes he should feel grateful that Obie waited a whole three months before moving to take over Tony’s place as CEO of Stark Industries.

Maybe it’s a sign of how desperate Steve has gotten that he even went to Obadiah Stane, hoping for help.

“I know you want to go look for him, Steve, and I want to help you. I do.” Obie had put his hand on Steve’s shoulder (something he’d never done before, something he’d once reserved for Tony alone) and _squeezed_. It didn’t make much of a dent, but Steve could gauge the force in Obie’s grasp, calculate how it would translate to a normal person’s pain tolerance, and immediately wanted to slug the old man right in his conciliatory smile. “This… this thing. It’s killing me too…” He looked pretty healthy for a dying man. Positively rosy-cheeked. “…not knowing whether he’s alive or dead, but Tony wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want you anywhere near that place. He’d want you _safe_ and taken care of, so I’m going to respect his wishes. I won’t help you.”

It was not the first time that Steve has deeply regretted making his cover identity an army vet going to art school with the GI Bill. Somehow that keeps translating into ‘Tony Stark’s glorified pool boy’ despite the fact that they have been legally married since 2008. Historically, Obie has either ignored Steve’s existence entirely or treats him like some sort of exotic lap dog.


	3. And Momma Duck Said...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint starts it, the asshole.
> 
> “There goes Momma Duck.” He says as Tony staggers past him en route to the coffeemaker.
> 
> Tony stalls out about halfway there in order to stare blearily at his teammate and Peter, who has apparently been toddling determinedly after him for the past ten minutes dragging his electric blue octopus plushie behind him, smacks nose-first into the back of Tony’s calves. He falls backwards and lands on his rump.

Clint starts it, the _asshole_.

“There goes Momma Duck.” He says as Tony staggers past him en route to the coffeemaker.

Tony stalls out about halfway there in order to stare blearily at his teammate and Peter, who has apparently been toddling determinedly after him for the past ten minutes dragging his electric blue octopus plushie behind him, smacks nose-first into the back of Tony’s calves. He falls backwards and lands on his rump.

“Oh, sh…” Clint clamps a hand over his mouth before the word escapes because Steve is death on inappropriate language at the best of times. The presence of three-year-old who is solidly in the middle of a mimic-phase in the tower has magnified it a thousand fold.

Peter sniffles once as his eyes start to shimmer and then hiccoughs in the beginnings of a wail that is abruptly cut off when Tony picks him up off the floor.

“Hey there, no crying.” It is disturbing how easily he’s fallen into this habit; pick up kid, settle him on one hip, and go about the day. Pepper took pictures at first, but after three weeks even her fascination with Tony-as-caregiver has waned. “Breakfast?”

Peter nods solemnly and apparently this has been his goal all along. He doesn’t like to talk much. He can if he wants to, but he still garbles some words and it seems to frustrate him. Tony doesn’t blame the kid. He didn’t talk at all until the age of four and then it was in full-blown sentences with perfect enunciation.

“Cereal.” Peter points at the Cheerios on top of the fridge. He’s pretty smart. He knows to point at the one covered in radiation symbols and warnings in Steve’s handwriting, which is pretty much the only way they’ve been able to keep Thor from absently munching his way through every single box cereal in the kitchen.

Steve gets back from his jog as Tony is shaking some cereal into a toddler-sized bowl for Peter and topping it with a careful drizzle of milk. Peter’s getting the hang of using utensils despite having something of a late start, but he tends to tilt the bowl when he eats and this has had unfortunate results in the past. At least he isn’t hugging his plate to chest anymore.

JARVIS reported spotting him hiding food under his bed last night though, so he’s still hoarding. They’re not exactly out of the woods yet.

“…aaand _there’s_ Daddy Duck.” Clint knocks back the last of his protein shake. “I’m out. It’s getting too domestic in here. I’m going to go find Natasha so we can shoot things.”

“Put a lid on it, Barton.” Steve snaps the order on autopilot, but without heat. “Morning, Peter. Morning, Tony.” The second half sounds a lot friendlier.

“If you kiss my cheek, I will slug you and probably break my hand in the process.” Tony warns him, because Steve has been exuding this aura of the 1950s ever since they found Peter in the wreckage of a blown out laboratory. It is quite frankly bizarre and Tony would like very much to know why he is the one stuck playing June to Steve’s Ward Cleaver.

“C’mon, kiddo. Say ‘good morning’.” Tony prompts Peter because they are going to break this shyness if it’s the last thing he does. The world is not kind to introverts.

“Mornin’.” Peter tucks his face into Tony’s shoulder, but he’s smiling so it’s ‘playful’ and not ‘afraid’. Good enough.

Steve is one of a short list of people who Peter will tolerate and weirdly, he is not at the top of the list.

Bruce is okay if no one else is present. Natasha will also do in a pinch. Peter _adores_ Thor so long as he’s supervised. Clint is right out, mainly because he’s sort of everybody’s butthead middle sibling. Fury scares the hell out of Peter and Hill isn’t much far behind. Steve is an eminently acceptable person and the only authority figure whose ‘no’ Peter will accept without question.

Tony, however, is his favorite and no one can figure out why the hell that is –and if Clint cracks wise about Tony’s ‘maternal aura’ one more time then Iron Man is going to go to town on his scrawny ass.

“Good job!” Steve holds up his palms for a double high-five and grins when he gets it. “My man.”

“Okay, more eating. Less bonding.” Tony doesn’t think about how good he’s gotten at wrangling Peter into his booster seat. Peter tucks into his cereal and Tony finally gets his coffee while Steve starts cracking eggs into a glass. ( _Yeugh_.)

“Wasn’t Hawkeye supposed to be watching Pete this morning?” Steve asks.

“Yup.” Tony’s stomach rumbles a little, which is… well, not odd. People generally get hungry this time of day. These people are not generally Tony. His internal schedule is getting all out of whack thanks to Peter. He’s waking up when the sun rises and (more to the point) Peter climbs into his bed, having escaped his bedroom like a tiny Houdini. He’s having trouble staying up past ten and now his stomach is starting to demand regular meals. Smoothies aren’t doing it anymore either.

You’d think he was turning forty this year or something… wait.

 _Shit_.

He pokes in the fridge, hoping to find something that doesn’t involve cooking. He doesn’t have a lot of luck. Instead he pulls out the last of the eggs and some chopped ham. He knows he’ll just burn an omelet, but maybe if he just tries to scramble the eggs with some meat inside them…?

“Tony, are you…” Steve is staring at him, wide-eyed. “Are you _voluntarily_ making food?”

Tony clutches the egg crate to his chest and glares. “So what if I am? I eat sometimes too.” He grumbles. “Food… things. _Don’t judge me_ , Rogers. It will not go well for you.”

“I’m not judging, but… why don’t you let me make you something instead?” There’s something about how Steve is…

Pepper must have told him about the omelet incident, the harpy.

“I’m only doing this to get food faster.” Tony sniffs and surrenders the eggs.

“Duly noted.” Steve moves to the stove and starts doing – _stuff_. It involves the eggs, ham, an addition of cheese, some milk, and mysterious herbs. Tony couldn’t tell you what, but when Steve is doing stuff in the kitchen the results are inevitably delicious.

… and maybe eating isn’t so bad if it means you can sit in your kitchen while the city is still relatively quiet and watch Captain America’s glorious ass in workout pants while he cooks you breakfast. Tony thinks maybe he should have caught onto this earlier.

(There is a soft scuff and Tony’s hand _moves_ catching the edge of Peter’s bowl before it flips over and drenches the boy in soggy Cheerios, settles it properly on the table, adjusts Peter’s grip on his spoon so he isn’t shoveling food into his mouth, and ruffling his hair all without much conscious input from Tony’s brain at all. They’ve repeated this scenario so many times that it’s all muscle-memory now.)

Steve’s omelet is a perfect half-moon and at least 3/16ths of it ends up in Peter while Steve pages through the newspaper, reading out bits to Tony, and watching over the top with an expression Tony can’t put a name to.

Life has gotten very strange in the Avengers Tower, but he’s not really sure what he could do to stop it.

At eleven o’clock, Peter goes to the daycare center on the third floor that serves Tony’s employees (and boy howdy has it gotten some upgrades now that Tony’s got a kid ~~of his own~~ in his care. He’s installing free employee daycare in _all_ his offices and for once Pepper isn’t complaining about impact on their overhead.) Clint takes him because _it’s his turn, that’s why_ and peace is restored to the Penthouse.

Or at least it will be once Tony’s finished clearing all the toys out of his living room. He is not particularly tidy by nature, but he objects to living in a romper house on general principle. This is _still_ a happening bachelor pad. Anyone who says otherwise is free to discuss the matter with Thor. Also: Tony has broken or fractured nearly every major bone in his body, he’s had major organ transplants, and once he was literally stabbed through the stomach with a giant icicle… but nothing, NOTHING compares to the pain of stepping on a duplo in your bare feet.

Tony has deep plush rugs and velvety smooth bamboo floors specifically so that he can walk around without shoes and still pamper his feet. He refuses to give that up and if the price is wandering around his living space for thirty minutes every morning and evening on the lookout for bright pieces of plastic builder blocks poised to attack, well, then that’s just the way it’s going to have to be.

Steve vanishes to shower and change while Tony is thusly engaged. He emerges just in time to find his housemate flat on his stomach on the floor by the couch, trying to reach a red four peg block from Peter’s ‘My First Fire Station’. The little bastard is JUST out of reach in the dead center of the couch’s footprint.

Mind you, the first Tony knows of Steve’s presence is when the couch lifts up into the air off his arm and Tony blinks up at Steve who is smiling down at him while holding the couch up easily in midair.

“Uh, thanks…” Tony snatches the block, ashamed to have been caught at this. Technically he has a cleaning crew, but they miss corners sometimes and the blocks are _sneaky_ and… “Uh, Steve. You can put the couch down now.”

Steve blinks as though he’s forgotten about it. “Oh, yeah. Move back?” The back of Steve’s neck is red as he sets down the sofa.

“Getting old, Rogers?” Tony grins because teasing Steve will NEVER get old. “You’re looking a little flushed there. Too much exertion for ya?”

“Funny man.” Steve drawls and the flush fades as he turns his head towards Tony. His gaze turns speculative. “Come spar with me.” He says suddenly. “We haven’t gone into the ring in a while.”

“Because I value my limbs and like them in their current configuration.” Tony tosses the brick in the direction of the toy bin. Hah! Slam _dunk_. “Besides, Clint’s making me learn Krav Maga. That’s enough abuse in one day for me.”


	4. The Clawbot Diaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint Barton, also known by the rather apt moniker of ‘Hawkeye’ amongst SHIELD personnel, crossed his arms over his chest. “I was down in the lower levels earlier…” 
> 
> “You mean the basement levels that require special access?” Steve observed blandly. There wasn’t a lot of point in reprimanding Clint for snooping. He’d just do it anyway and if Steve put his foot down then Clint would stop reporting his finds.
> 
> “… and there’s a guy down there with all these robots and this full-on hobo beard.” Clint went on like Steve hadn’t said a word. “There’s evidence of a prolonged stay; food containers in the trash, a mini-fridge, two microwaves, cot in the corner with messy sheets…” Clint ticks the facts off with his fingers. “I think he might be a mad scientist. Fury is keeping a mad scientist in our HQ.”
> 
> “I sort of just assumed that.” Steve confessed and held up his hands when Clint’s jaw dropped. “Director Fury flies around in an invisible flying aircraft carrier. I just took it as read that he has a few madboys on the payroll.”

“Cap, there’s a dude living in the basement.”

 

Steve set down his charcoal, taking care to wipe his fingers on some of the tissue he used for smudging before he turned to look at Clint with both eyebrows raised. “Mind repeating that, Hawkeye?” He asked the man standing just inside the door to Steve’s quarters.

 

Space wasn’t easy to come by in the bunker that the Avengers called home, but past service meant that Steve rated a small suite with a closet for a bedroom just off of what was supposed to be an office. As he didn’t keep office hours, Steve opted to turn it into a studio. It was something to do in-between missions and training sessions.

 

Clint Barton, also known by the rather apt moniker of ‘Hawkeye’ amongst SHIELD personnel, crossed his arms over his chest. “I was down in the lower levels earlier…”

 

“You mean the basement levels that require special access?” Steve observed blandly. There wasn’t a lot of point in reprimanding Clint for snooping. He’d just do it anyway and if Steve put his foot down then Clint would stop reporting his finds.

 

“… and there’s a _guy_ down there with all these robots and this full-on hobo beard.” Clint went on like Steve hadn’t said a word. “There’s evidence of a prolonged stay; food containers in the trash, a mini-fridge, two microwaves, cot in the corner with messy sheets…” Clint ticks the facts off with his fingers. “I think he might be a mad scientist. Fury is _keeping a mad scientist in our HQ_.”

 

“I sort of just assumed that.” Steve confessed and held up his hands when Clint’s jaw dropped. “Director Fury flies around in an invisible flying aircraft carrier. I just took it as read that he has a few madboys on the payroll.”

 

“Well, gee, when you put it like that it sounds so reasonable.” Clint rolled his eyes. “ _Cap_! We could be living on top of the next invasion of evil robot ninjas! I don’t want to have to think about that when I’m sitting on the can! I have enough things to be paranoid about already!”

 

“Did you see any evil robot ninjas while you were down there?” Steve asked because it was a legitimate question.

 

“Nooo, but…” Clint scowled and gesticulated wildly for emphasis. “There WERE robots! Like claw monster robots that kept shooting things with fire extinguishers! Things that _were not on fire_. I find this to be a subject of some concern!”

 

“I’m having trouble seeing the problem.” Steve admitted because he lived in a world where Manhattan island could be levitated out of the bay at any second by telekinetic mealworms. Clawbots who couldn’t figure out the nuances of fire safety ranked low on his threat index. “… BUT…” He added, holding his hands up to forestall another outburst. “I will look into it. I’m not wild about going to sleep when evil robotic ninjas could come crawling through the floor at any second either.”

 

Clint sagged with visible relief. “Thanks, Cap. I knew you would understand.”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve asked Fury the next time they got a beer together.

 

It was an informal thing; a chance to ask questions of each other without the potential for conflict or repercussions away from the jurisdictional minefield that was the Helicarrier. The Avengers were technically independent of SHIELD, but that was something of a political nicety. In truth their funding came from SHIELD ergo Fury was in charge.

 

“He is not a threat.” Fury said flat out. “Is he an unrelenting pain in my ass? Definitely. Is he likely to build the army of flying toasters from AfterDark in a fit of sleep-deprived hallucinations? Possibly. Is he a danger to anyone in this building? Not likely. Tell Barton he can sleep easy and that when I told him to stay out of the restricted areas it was not just to hear myself speak.”

 

Steve had not in fact named his source, but he was talking to a master spy after all. Plus there weren’t a lot of people who could sneak into the lower levels undetected and would only report their findings to Captain America. Natasha might, but mere words could not describe the ways in which she did not care about anything that wasn’t part of her assigned tasks.

 

“I’ll talk to him about it.” Steve promised, although he made sure not to imply that he could make Clint stop because that would take a level of persuasion Steve really just did not possess. “I should go. We have war games with the Air Force in the morning.” He drained his glass with an appreciative sigh.

 

There were a lot of things wrong with the future, but he’d arrived in the middle of a brewer’s renaissance. Aged cappuccino stout didn’t make up for his losses, but it cushioned a few of them.

 

“Hmmm.” Was Fury’s response indicating that he was well aware of the exact extent of Steve’s promise. “Damn it, only Stark could cause me this kind of grief sitting in his lab minding his own business.”

 

The words hadn’t been intended for him and in fact Steve had turned to go, but his ears (sensitized long ago by the serum) caught them anyway. The word Stark resounded in his head like a claxon. “Did you just…?”

 

Fury had turned his attention away to the soccer playing on the screen above the bar.

 

“Thanks, Nick.” Steve said, setting his empty glass down on the table. Let anyone watching think it was for picking up the tab.

 

Dismissal was clear in every line of Fury’s body –which meant that had been a deliberate slip.

 

For some reason, Nick Fury wanted him to know that the man in the basement was named Stark… which was funny because Steve distinctly remembered receiving a briefing packet shortly after waking up that said Howard Stark and all his remaining family were dead.

 

* * *

 

Steve dusted off the old file when he got back to his room. It was a hardcopy that he’d never quite been able to part with held in a pale blue folio. Inside were facts, figures, pictures, and diagrams that sketched out the lives of everyone he’d left behind in his own era; his men, Howard, General Morris, and… Peggy.

 

He paged over to the section that contained Howard’s information. There was some PR fluff in there about Stark Industries, which was now Stane Ltd. Someone had printed out a scanned copy of Howard’s obituary from when he died along with his wife.

 

It was hard to look at the picture, which was one from when Howard was younger… probably shortly after he married Maria because they were smiling, bright and happy. Maria’s hair was glossy black and her eyes were glowing. She looked like a new bride. Howard looked to be somewhat older; closer to his fifties with a wife who couldn’t possibly be over thirty.

 

Well… Steve supposed that was the way of things in Howard’s world. Personally, Steve had always thought Howard would fall for General Morris’s pretty blonde secretary. She’d been making good headway when Steve was sent out on that final mission.

 

For once he let his eyes linger on the last bits of the brief article; ‘Howard and Maria Stark are survived by their son, Anthony Edward Stark age 16, a recent graduate of MIT and engineer for Stark Industries’. He’d been excited the first time he saw that because if Anthony Stark was sixteen in 1988 then he could only be as old as forty in the year 2012. If Howard had married in the usual course of things then Anthony would have been in his sixties when Steve was brought up from the ice.

 

It had been a brief glimmer of hope, the idea that if he couldn’t find someone he’d known back in the old days then maybe there might be someone near his age in the modern day who had.

 

That bit of hope died on the next page, which was an article discussing the unanticipated death of Anthony Stark in 2010. He read the article again, more closely. The last time he’d read it he’d been numb and only absorbed the basic facts; kidnapping, terrorists, and a failed escape that led the man to die of exposure in the Registan desert. On Anthony Stark’s death, control of Stark Industries was transferred to the company’s CFO, Obadiah Stane, who promptly became one of the top three men on SHIELD’s threat watch.

 

Steve flipped through the rest of the story, which he’d started to have serious doubts about. There were a few more pages talking about Stane, why he was a threat, who he was suspected of trading arms with, and whose murders he was suspected of ordering.

 

SHIELD had no evidence that he was behind Howard’s car wreck or Anthony’s kidnapping, but in retrospect they were operating under the assumption that he had.

 

There was a lie lurking in his file, Steve decided; a small lie, but one with wide-reaching effects.

 

Anthony Edward Stark was alive –and that was something worth investigation.

 

* * *

 

“No offense, big guy. I don’t think you’re going to fit in the HVAC system.”

 

“I don’t need to. I just need a distraction.”

 

“Oh, well, THAT I can do.”

 

* * *

 

The power cut out at ten PM the following evening. Steve had been in the middle of reading _I, Robot_ when the lights suddenly cut out. All was darkness for five seconds until the dull red emergency lights hummed to life.

 

Steve closed his paperback and tucked it into his back pocket.

 

The halls were largely deserted, but in the distance he could hear shouts and swearing. Hawkeye was a man who loved his work.

 

Losing no time, he made his way to the stairwell. The stairs didn’t go all the way down, but they led to the maintenance shafts. Those were a tight fit, but Steve had been born with an exceptional sense of direction that the serum had only seemed to refine. For example, he always point himself north without any trouble. He ended up in _an_ HVAC system, but it seemed to be one that was separate from that of the upper level… which gave him some more nightmare fodder about possible biological experiments going on Downstairs.

 

He dropped out of the ducts into a well-lit corridor. Fascinating. The lower levels had their own independent power system.

 

Checking his mental map, Steve oriented himself using the support walls and started moving towards the location Clint had given him. The halls were large, empty, and showed some small signs of disuse; clearly meant to accommodate the movement of large equipment. Someone had been by to clean in the past few weeks, but it wasn’t a regular occurrence.

 

“Interesting.” Steve murmured.

 

The closer he got to his goal, the more evidence of use he began to see. There was still little sign of human occupation, but something that ran on rubber crawler tracks went by here quite often if the scuffs on the linoleum tile were anything to go by.

 

 _Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr_ …

 

The soft sound of a motor drew Steve’s attention and when he rounded the next corner he found himself nose-to-camera with what had to be one of the clawbots that had Clinton on high alert. It squealed in something akin to alarm and went in to reverse at the same moment Steve jerked backwards.

 

“Wait!” He cried out as it tried to make a three-point turn and retreat in the direction from which it came. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay, little guy…”

 

‘Little guy’ was something of a misnomer, really. The clawbot was taller than Steve even and he had topped out at 6’ 3” after the serum got done with him. Still, it hesitated with a curious sound of whirring motors and gizmos that somehow put Steve in the mind of speech.

 

“I’m looking for somebody.” Steve held his hands up in the universal sign of ‘I’m not a bad guy’, showing the clawbot that his hands were empty. ‘Clawbot’ was kind of a misnomer too. The robot was sort of an arm on wheels. What Steve was treating as it head was really a three-pronged ‘hand’ of sorts set around this slightly flared tube. The tube connected to a hose that ran the length of the clawbot’s body and connected to a red canister that rode just above the bot’s tracks. “Can you help me?”

 

There was a quizzical chirp from the clawbot as it appeared to look him over. Then it straightened its claw-face up to eye level. Its hand flared and spun around in what Steve had to take as agreement.

 

“I’m looking for a man named Stark. Can you show me where he is?”Steve asked.

 

Whatever goodwill he’d established with the clawbot abruptly vanished and the machine crouched down low with what sounded like a _hiss_. It clicked its hand at him menacingly.

 

“I don’t want to hurt him.” Steve said. “I just want to talk to him.” He took a step forward without really thinking… that turned out to have been a mistake.

 

The clawbot lunged forward and before he could react it cut loose with a massive spray of white powder right into his face before it went screeching off down the hallway. Steve sputtered in shock, dismay, and a little pain. Moreover he put a foot wrong before he could get his balance again and ended up slipping in the fire-retardant foam that the clawbot had turned on him.

 

“Well, at least I know I’m headed in the right direction.” Steve wiped the foam out of his eyes and brushed himself off as best he could. Then he set off in the direction that the clawbot fled in.

 

The hallway led to a pair of those wide flexible plastic sheets that tended to mark storage rooms and laboratories. The ‘doors’ were still swinging in the wake of the clawbot’s passage. Steve gently pushed one of the panels to the side and peered into what turned out to be a small warehouse. Most of it was dark and empty, but the corner nearest the entrance was lit up like high noon with floodlight illuminating all manner of lab benches, tables, strange computer like things that were futuristic even in this brand new future, several more clawbots including the one carrying the thing Steve belatedly recognized as a fire extinquisher, and one man who stood in the center of it all –holding a gun very nearly as big as he was trained on Steve.

 

“Sorry, Ace.” The man was short and spry like Howard had been. His olive-toned skin was fairly pale against his dark hair, which was over-long and shaggy. He wore a full beard that was liberally peppered with gray, but it did nothing to detract from the hard intelligence in his dark brown eyes. “Don’t think anyone told me to be expecting company.”

 

“Ah … Mr. Stark, I presume?” Steve felt like he’d been holding his hands up an awful lot recently. “Steve Rogers. I came down here to talk to you.”

 

“I gathered that, yes.” Mr. Stark didn’t lower his weapon. “Got anything to do with the brouhaha going on upstairs?”

 

“I might have taken advantage of the confusion.” Steve admitted. “I’m not here to hurt anyone though. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.” It sounded kind of lame once he said it out loud, but that made it no less true. Steve owed a lot to Howard.

 

“Why.” It wasn’t entirely a question and Mr. Stark had a blank sort of fatalistic look in his eye.

 

“Would you believe me if I said it was as a favor to an old friend?”

 

“Depends on the friend.”

 

The more he looked at the man, the more certain Steve became that he was in the presence of Anthony Stark. He had Howard’s cheek bones lurking underneath that scruffy beard and the same lustrous black hair that Steve had seen on his mother in her memorial photo… not to mention the same eyes.

 

“It was your father actually, Anthony… can I call you that?” Steve asked. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

 

“Can’t have been much of a friend, kiddo.” Anthony observed and didn’t bother to deny his identity. “You wouldn’t have been more than five when he died. Pull the other one. It’s got bells on it. Better yet, why don’t you have a seat over yonder while we wait for security to arrive? I promise not to shoot if you promise not to pull any dumbass stunts.”

 

Steve considered pushing the issue, but Anthony had an awful big gun and he didn’t want to attract attention before he was ready for it. “I did know your father.” He explained as he crossed over to the bench that his host had nodded towards. “I was asleep for a while. You might have heard?”

 

“You are claiming to be Captain America?” Anthony snorted … and then shrugged. “All right. Say you are him. Willing to submit to a scan?”

 

“Sure.” Steve shrugged. He’d been through a million tests after waking up in SHIELD HQ. “What should I do?”

 

Whatever Anthony had been expecting, it apparently hadn’t been Steve’s easy capitulation. “JARVIS?” He called out and Steve startled badly when an omnipresent voice responded with a mild ‘Sir?’

 

“Full scans on our guest here. Check him against SHIELD databases. If you’re challenged, tell them there’s someone claiming to be him in my lab.”

 

‘Of course. May I suggest retaining control of your weapon until such time as I may verify his story?’

 

“Already done, sweetheart.” Anthony quipped and the barrel of the gun did not so much as waver. “Settle in, Captain Crunch. You aren’t going anywhere.”

 

Steve shrugged. Technically the entire bunker was under his command (another one of those polite fictions), but even he didn’t have clearance for the basement levels. If Fury caught him then there would be repercussions, but nothing worse than a public slap on the wrist.

 

‘Sir.’ The voice ---JARVIS, Steve supposed, was back within seconds. ‘He is indeed who he claims to be. Shall I cancel the security alert?’

 

Anthony frowned and then shrugged in an abrupt shift of attitude. “Okay, yeah. Better yes, wipe the records if no one up there has noticed yet. I don’t particularly want Coulson to make good on his threat to put a baby monitor down here. I’d just have to take it apart for component pieces and then it’s Supernanny all over again.”

 

“He’s put you in the naughty chair?” Steve asked, thinking back to a couple of Hawkeye’s more spectacular pranks in the field.

 

“Yeaaaah.” Anthony’s eyes skittered to the left. “Let’s call it that. _So_.” He powered down his gun. The bands of lurid red ringing the barrel died out into black and he leaned it pointing down against a nearby table. “You say you knew my dad.”

 

“I did. Uh… back in the Strategic Science Reserve, actually. He was a civilian contractor and flew my men to a few of our drop points.”

 

“Funny, I don’t recall my old man ever mentioning being a combat pilot.” Anthony crossed his bare arms over his chest. He was pretty thin in his person, but his arms showed evidence of heavy labor… which probably had something to do with the anvil off to one side of his lab area.

 

“He wasn’t.” Steve shrugged. “We didn’t receive official sanction nine times out of ten and Howard was an amazing pilot who was –kind of crazy, but good at the same time. It worked out.”

 

That startled a laugh out of Anthony who shook his head. “Not a story he ever told me, but… it sounds like him. All right.” He scratched the back of his head. “So, uh. What brings you down here?”

 

“I heard you were dead. Then I heard otherwise.” Steve said. “I got curious and figured it was best to head straight to the source.”

 

“That’s it?” Anthony shook his head despairingly. “Well, look your fill. I’m alive. You can head upstairs now and never mention it again. Seriously. Not a _word_.”

 

“I wasn’t planning on it. Just… what are you doing down here?” Steve gestured at the cavernous laboratory and the small ring of light that made up Anthony’s whole world. “I read a little about your work. SHIELD could do better for you.”

 

“They would if I agreed to make weapons for them.” Anthony replied. “I don’t, ergo…”

 

“Didn’t you make weapons before?”

 

“Isn’t this all in a report somewhere?” Anthony asked as he dropped down onto a bench. “I would have thought that you folks would be lousy with bureaucracy.”

 

“If it’s in a report I’m not privy to it.” Steve wasn’t privy to a lot of the pies SHIELD had their fingers in. “I just know the official story, what with the… uh… terrorists and all.”

 

“Well, let’s just say the terrorists had some domestic help in catching me.” Anthony stared into the middle distance, clearly remembering something. “More to the point, the guys who took me had an awful lot of my guns; guns I did not sell to them. I became aware of the inherent futility of trying to keep the weapons I made in the hands I made them for. So now I don’t make guns for anyone. SHIELD exchanges my work in communications development and the occasional practical problem-solving for protection from my enemies.”

 

“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you get out alive?”

 

“Hmm? Oh. Rocket boots and a pair of homemade flamethrowers.” He said it like that explained everything –and maybe it did.

 

* * *

 

There was an envelope on Steve’s bed when he got back into his quarters. There was a new upgraded swipe card inside and a note in Fury’s handwriting that said ‘I don’t know why I even tried to be subtle.’

 

* * *

 

“So, is the mad scientist gone now?” Clint asked the next morning over breakfast in front of God and everybody in the mess. Natasha may have facepalmed.

 

“The mad scientist is just a somewhat irritable engineer.” Steve reported. “No danger of evil robotic ninja armies so long as the caffeine supply doesn’t dip.”

 

“I find that to be entirely reasonable.” Bruce said, pulling one of his ear-buds free so as to participate in the conversation. Steve had borrowed his teammate’s ipod once to see what was on it. Long story short; Braham’s lullaby, weird Zen fusion flute music, Bach, and a lot of soothing rain noises.

 

“You would.” Clint countered. “So our best line of defense is to keep a supply of Starbucks laid in. Good to know.”

 

“Not the best plan of action. Stark’s a coffee snob; city roast Kona or bust.” Natasha commented, seemingly at random but with an aside glance at Steve making it clear she was announcing her own security clearance.

 

“Comrades! Sweet morning to you!” Thor boomed in his friendly way as he set his loaded tray down at his customary spot. “I am pleased to see you are all well rested. Of what do we speak?”

 

“Clint had a nightmare and made Cap go check the basement for mad scientists.” Bruce explained. “To everyone’s surprise, he found one. He turned out to be a friendly.”

 

“That was not what happened!” Clint objected. “Also, we don’t know that he’s friendly.”

 

“We do.” Steve leveled a look at Clint. “He’s the son of one of my old friends from… _before_. I’d heard he was dead, but it turns out he’s in SHIELD protective custody. I vouch for him.”

 

“A friend of yours thought lost, but who is now recovered? This is most welcome news!” Thor piled some gravlax onto a frosted blueberry poptart and topped it with crumbled hardboiled egg. “Where is this person? What is his name? I would clasp hands with him.”

 

“His name is Tony. He stays in the secure labs downstairs.” Steve considered the breakfast buffet. Near as he could figure, Tony lived out of the minifridge Clint had spotted. That was kind of a shame when there was perfectly good food upstairs… but it would probably be weird to take the man a plate on forty minutes acquaintance. “I’m heading down there later. You can come with me if you like, Thor.”

 

“I am humbled by your generosity, Captain.” Thor demurred. “However, my permissions in the halls of Midgard are not wide. It would justly shame me to walk into those areas where I have not been specifically welcomed. Perhaps another time with the Director’s blessings?”

 

“There shouldn’t be a problem.” Natasha volunteered in a rare show. “Fury’s been worried about our guest downstairs. He’s too cooped up and it’s starting to show. If Steve can see him there shouldn’t be a problem if any of us apply for access.” It probably shouldn’t have surprised Steve that she had the highest security clearance of them all. She was the logical person onsite to monitor Tony and -judging by the set of her mouth- _Fury_ wasn’t the one who was concerned.

 

Steve thought back to the man’s thin wrists and unkempt beard. She wasn’t the only one. Tony looked like he was still in prison and maybe he was. The bars weren’t visible, but if he set foot outside of the bunker Stane would no doubt hear about it within hours.

 

“On it.” Clint was already tapping something into his phone with thumbs that blurred with speed. “Bruce, I’m tacking your application onto mine and Thor’s.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You have my gratitude, Clint Barton. Please greet your Tony on our behalf.” Thor beamed at Steve, which was a good thing. The Asgardian was gregarious by nature and sometimes the bunker mentality common to the SHIELD agents they worked with on a daily basis wore at him.

 

There wasn’t a lot of point in trying to explain that Anthony Stark wasn’t ‘his’ anything. Thor either wouldn’t get it or would make a compelling case for why he was and that never ended well for anyone.

 

“I’ll do that.” Steve promised and wandered over to the sideboard to pick through what was left. He was intent on snagging some bacon before the junior agents arrived so he almost didn’t catch it when Natasha murmured something as he passed. It sounded like ‘Poor Stark. This should be interesting.’

 

… but why would she say that?

 

* * *

 

JARVIS greeted Steve just as he reached the end of Tony’s corridor. ‘Welcome back, Captain Rogers.’ The AI said. ‘Shall I alert sir to your presence?’

 

“Uh… sure.” Steve was adjusting to the Future. He could handle computers and weird planes that mantled like hawks. Clint’s rotary quiver didn’t bother him and wireless communications weren’t the surprise to him that people kept expecting it to be. Still, cell phones were a lot handier and more useful than the phone-in-a-bag they’d once carried into the field. The AI, however, was going to take some getting used to; the idea that a human being could create something that thought, felt, and reasoned without having to give birth was a bit much. “Hello, JARVIS and thank you.”

 

‘You are very welcome, Captain.’ Maybe it was just his imagination, but the AI’s voice sounded a little pleased. Steve made a note to keep his manners handy whenever he was in JARVIS’s radius.

 

“Well, well. If it isn’t the man with a plan.” Tony commented from underneath a great honking big piece of machinery whose purpose Steve didn’t care to speculate on. “Don’t suppose you could give me a hand over here? I’m a bit stuck.”

 

“Sure, do you need me to lift it up?” Steve eyed the machine, which looked sort of like an enormous engine block to him. The only part of Tony visible was his legs where they stuck out from a hollow in the side of it. Maybe it was a good thing he was on the small side. Steve couldn’t imagine having to wedge himself into that hole. He might have done in his old pre-serum days.

 

“If you can, that would be awesome… and potentially hot. JARVIS, get pictures would you?”

 

“You never stop, do you?” It was a rhetorical question. The engine block thingy wasn’t actually that heavy. The metal was comparatively light to its mass and Steve was able to tilt it up with just one hand.

 

Tony sat up, brushing metal shavings out of his hair. “Not really.” He looked up and Steve nearly dropped the machine on him.


End file.
